El Sicario Room 164

Product Description In an anonymous motel room on the U.S./Mexico border, a Ciudad Ju rez hitman speaks. He has killed hundreds of people and is an expert in torture and kidnapping. He was simultaneously on the payroll of the Mexican drug cartels and a commander of the Chihuahua State Police. There is currently a $250,000 contract on his life and he lives as a fugitive, though he has never been charged with a crime in any country. With his face obscured by a black mesh hood, he tells his story to the camera inside the very motel room he once used to hold and torture kidnapped victims. Aided only by a magic marker and notepad, which he uses to illustrate and diagram his words, the sicario describes, in astounding detail, his life of crime, murder, abduction and torture. Review A minimalist study in maximum violence, Gianfranco Rosi's El Sicario Room 164 offers viewers the rare chance to meet a Mexican narco hitman and to live to tell the tale. --Variety One of the most revealing and shocking documentaries ever made about the drug trade. --Chuck Bowen, Slant Magazine One who knows speaks - and well. --The Village Voice One of the most revealing and shocking documentaries ever made about the drug trade. --Chuck Bowen, Slant Magazine One who knows speaks - and well. --The Village Voice About the Director Gianfranco Rosi produced, directed, and photographed Boatman (1993), and Afterwords (2000), which premiered at the Venice Film Festival. The film Below Sea Level, which he directed, photographed, and produced, premiered in at the Venice Film Festival in 2008 and won numerous awards including the Orizzonti Documentary Award, the Grand Prix and Prix des Jeunes at Cinema Du Reel in Paris, and Best Italian Documentary at the Bellaria Film Festival. Below Sea Level was also nominated for Best Documentary at the 2009 European Film Academy Awards. Rosi is a guest lecturer at New York University Film School and the CCC in Mexico City, and teaches documentary at SUPSI in Switzerland and at the Accademia del l immagine in L Aquila.